Working People’s Finances: Government Policy
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debate19:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 222 / Noes: 300 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“welcomes the £400 billion package of support the Government has put in place to protect jobs, incomes and livelihoods throughout this covid-19 pandemic, including a temporary cut to VAT, generous cash grants for businesses, a business rates holiday, and the furlough scheme which protected 11 million people at its peak; notes the launching of the Plan For Jobs to help people back into work and gain the right skills to succeed in the jobs of tomorrow through schemes such as Kickstart for young people, Restart for the long-term unemployed, the Lifetime Skills Guarantee and additional funding for apprenticeships, traineeships and work coaches; further notes the measures taken by the Government to keep costs down for working people, such as introducing and increasing the National Living Wage in 2016 so that a full-time worker is £4,000 a year better off than before, doubling personal tax thresholds giving individuals an extra £1,200 per year, protecting local taxpayers from excessive council tax increases, introducing an energy price cap which protects 15 million households by around £100 a year, and freezing fuel duty for 11 consecutive years which has saved drivers £1,600 compared to 2010; and believes that this plan is working, as evidenced by unemployment forecast to be 2 million lower than previously expected, job vacancies at record highs, household incomes protected, consumer confidence back to pre-covid-19 pandemic levels, and GDP recovering rapidly, with the IMF forecasting the UK to have the highest growth in the G7 this year.”.
It is a pleasure to be back at the Dispatch Box and to have the opportunity to respond to the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson). I thank her for her kind words on my appointment. It is great that the north-east has two representatives in the debate, and I am delighted that the north-east economy is in robust shape, contrary to what we just heard.
In the last 18 months, safeguarding working people’s finances has been the Government’s defining mission, and we have succeeded in that task. Just today, the OECD economic outlook says that it expects the UK to see the fastest growth in the G7 both this year and next. The IMF has described the UK’s policy response as “aggressive” and as one of the
“best examples of co-ordinated action globally”,
helping to mitigate the damage wreaked by the pandemic, and
“holding down unemployment and insolvencies.”
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Chief Secretary begins his speech by talking about growth, which everyone in the Chamber would like to see, but what impact is there on struggling businesses from the clobbering increase in national insurance? That will have an impact on not just individuals but employers and the workplace.
Mr Clarke
We are clear that the right thing to do as we emerge from the pandemic, in which we have spent £400 billion on providing a comprehensive response, is ensure that our NHS is ready to deal with the backlog of cases that has inevitably arisen as well as providing a long-term fix for social care in a broad-based solution, bringing together a progressive tax rise in which the wealthiest pay more and business plays a fair role. I am confident that that is the right thing to do at this time.
Let me remind the House once more of the sheer scale of what this Government have been doing and of our support for the economy. The £400 billion I referenced a moment ago is spending that has been devoted to safeguarding jobs and incomes the length and breadth of the UK. It is spending that has given millions of people financial certainty through a very difficult 18 months.
The furlough scheme has protected 11.6 million jobs—that is equivalent to a third of the entire workforce—and it has paid out £68.5 billion to employers. The self-employment income support scheme has provided £27 billion to almost 3 million people. Businesses have been kept afloat thanks to loan schemes worth £79 billion, in addition to cash grants, VAT cuts and business rates relief, while the most vulnerable have been supported by a temporary uplift to welfare payments. HM Treasury’s own distributional analysis shows that our interventions have supported the poorest working households most as a proportion of income. That list is far from exhaustive, but it shows how the Government have met an extraordinary crisis with an extraordinary package of measures.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
In your constituency of Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland—
Kim Johnson
In the Minister’s constituency of Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, the child poverty rate is 24.7%, smashing the national average of 19.1%, and up nearly 10% over the past six years. Can the Minister tell us exactly how he intends to justify his own Government’s decisions to hit the pockets of the most vulnerable families and disadvantaged people he represents?
Mr Clarke
I am incredibly proud to be part of the extraordinary transformation of Teesside’s economy, which is taking incredible shape under the work of our Mayor, Ben Houchen. Of course, that was reflected in the fact that the Tees Valley voted by 73% to re-elect our Conservative Mayor just this May. Why was that? It happened because of jobs and growth, and hope and pride in place—all the things that this Government are committed to delivering, and all the things that a Conservative Government are doing after years in which Labour neglected areas such as Teesside and left us with no plan, no options and no future.
Peak unemployment is now forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility as being substantially lower than initially expected. All the evidence now points to a rebounding labour market. Just last week, the Office for National Statistics reported that vacancies are at a record high, while the headline unemployment rate has fallen for seven consecutive months and now stands at 4.6%.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I am a bit concerned that the Minister has not actually read the motion on the Order Paper. This is about people who are in work. I absolutely agree that people have been kept in work as a result of the schemes that are being scrapped—that is the case—but the thing is that if people are not being paid the living wage and are not being paid enough money to actually live on, they are going to continue to be in poverty no matter whether or not they are in work.
Mr Clarke
I can assure the hon. Lady that I have read the motion closely, which is of course why I am celebrating the fact that the ONS estimates that underlying regular wage growth is between 3.6% and 5.1%. It is why I am so proud that we are the Government who introduced the national living wage, which has of course meant more money in the pockets of working people. So this is exactly about bearing down on the cost of living and about supporting families throughout a really difficult time. That is what we have managed to do and what we will continue to do.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
The vast majority of people among my constituents who have written to me about the cut in universal credit are in work, some of them doing two or three jobs, yet many of them are going to be pushed into poverty by the cut the Minister is defending now.
Mr Clarke
The hon. Gentleman needs to bear it in mind that we are of course dealing here with a product, in universal credit, that has a number of different components. The change to which he is alluding affects the standard allowance, but the majority of households on universal credit of course receive many additional elements—for example, 58% receive additional support for housing costs and 38% receive the child element—and many households on UC will also have access to additional sources of income, such as child benefit. This comes before we come to all the things we have built into the system over recent years to make universal credit more generous. That includes, for example, the £1,000-a-year increase to the work allowance, which was announced in 2018 and is worth £630 to working parents and people with disabilities, and of course we have changed the taper rate so people get to keep more of the money they earn as their earnings increase. This is a very carefully calibrated system, and let us not forget that this is far better, frankly, than the legacy programme we inherited from the last Labour Government, which of course, as we know, did not incentivise work, did not properly support people and was a failure, so I am afraid I will not take lessons on universal credit from the hon. Gentleman.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Clarke
I want to make progress because it is important that we reflect on the employment situation in the United Kingdom. Our joblessness rate is now lower than that of the United States, lower than that of Canada and lower than those of France, Italy and Spain. People have been coming off the furlough scheme very rapidly now, and the numbers are down to 5.1 million in January to 1.6 million at the end of July, while almost half of those people still on the scheme, lest we forget, are already working through flexible furlough. The number of people claiming self-employment grants has fallen significantly, too. But that is not all: broader economic growth has exceeded expectations as restrictions have been lifted.
Miriam Cates
My right hon. Friend refers to the furlough scheme, which has of course been a phenomenally successful scheme. It has been credited with preventing mass unemployment and saving the job market. Does he not agree that Opposition cries that we are clobbering working people absolutely do not stack up when we consider the furlough scheme?
Mr Clarke
I thank my hon. Friend for her point, and this is absolutely right. The furlough scheme has been absolutely essential to supporting the UK throughout this very difficult period. It has been an historic success, and we only need to consider how serious the employment situation would have been had we failed to intervene and failed to show the decisive leadership that this Government have shown.
Alex Cunningham
As a fellow Tees Member of Parliament, the Minister will be aware that at the height, just a few weeks ago, there were 12,000 more unemployed people across the Tees Valley than there were in March last year. How does he reconcile that with talking up the Tees Valley employment situation?
Mr Clarke
I do so quite readily when I look at the extraordinary potential of our local economy. We have all the new jobs coming in at the Teesworks site, the former Redcar steelworks site. We have the hope and potential of green industry, which the hon. Member champions, as I do, with all the jobs in carbon capture, utilisation and storage as well as hydrogen. There is the new GE Renewable Energy factory, which will employ 2,500 people. Its construction starts incredibly soon, and it will be fully operational by 2023. Those are the reasons for hope and optimism. Of course, I will never apologise for talking up Teesside, just as we should never apologise for talking up the UK economy. We have done an extraordinary thing in this country: we have got through the pandemic—we have weathered the storm—and now we can move on to the recovery.
Jack Dromey
Three out of the 10 most deprived constituencies in England are in Birmingham and 42% of children in Birmingham are growing up in poverty, yet the Government are hitting Birmingham hard with the £1,000 a year cut to universal credit and the national insurance rise on top of the cost of living going up and soaring energy costs, with supermarket costs up, childcare costs up and rents up. Can I ask the right hon. Member this question: have the Government carried out any impact assessment of the consequences of their actions on Brummies, not least because the simple bleak reality is that tens of thousands face a tough Christmas and a bleak new year?
Mr Clarke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, which basically re-summarised the speech we heard from the shadow Minister. I can confirm that HMT’s distributional analysis has shown that, as a proportion of income, our interventions have supported the poorest working households the most. Of course I recognise the challenges—I represent a constituency that has many challenges—but the number of children in absolute poverty, to which he alluded a moment ago, is lower than it was when Labour left office in 2009-10, both before and after housing costs are considered. These are incredibly important achievements, and we should never lose sight of them. In short, we took decisive action, and that action has worked.
It is clear that the world of September 2021 is very different from that of March 2020. The success of our vaccine roll-out means that most restrictions have now been lifted and we are seeing the benefits of our approach. These new circumstances therefore require a new response. We of course believe that the best anti-poverty strategy is a jobs strategy, and the best way to help vulnerable people is to provide them with the opportunities that they need for well-paid work.
Aaron Bell
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. He is right about the importance of jobs, and not just well-paid jobs but high skilled jobs. Can he say something about how our plan for jobs is delivering people with skills? We have a limited amount of money to spend and it is better to invest that in people’s skills than endlessly into welfare.
Mr Clarke
I absolutely agree: it is very important that we invest in skills. The plan for jobs is not just about getting people into work or keeping them in work; it is about making sure they grow their skills during their working lives, which is why we have a focus on more skills for school leavers and generous apprenticeship hiring incentives. We are also tripling the number of traineeships for 16 to 24-year-olds, and we have the pioneering lifetime skills guarantee. These are all the sorts of things that will make a difference in Staffordshire as they will across the rest of the UK, and we should be incredibly proud of that.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
On the previous intervention about there being a limited amount of money that can only go so far, did the £1.6 billion allocated for a nil rate stamp duty on houses worth up to £500,000 help the poorest, the richest, or a combination of the richest and the housebuilders’ profits?
Mr Clarke
The hon. Gentleman asks us to apologise for keeping the housing market moving in the teeth of the pandemic and I make absolutely no apology for that; it was absolutely the right thing to do to make sure we did not see a collapse of that market.
It is important to recognise that supplying, protecting and creating employment opportunities is the right way forward both economically and politically for our country. That is why we have made a deliberate choice to invest in our plan for jobs, which we launched over a year ago to create work opportunities and assist workers to develop the right skills for the future.
Our plan is helping young people—a group disproportionately affected by the pandemic—through the £2 billion kickstart scheme. At lunch, I was talking to the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), about the impact of these programmes on young people, creating and fully funding hundreds of thousands of jobs for those at risk of long-term unemployment. I am proud that so far over 63,000 young people have had the chance to begin a kickstart job, with the numbers growing by more than 2,000 every week. Our plan will support more than 1 million unemployed people, many of whom are aged over 50, helping them find work through our three-year-long £2.9 billion restart programme, and providing jobseekers with the personalised, intensive support that will make a real difference to their prospects.
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
On retraining opportunities, may I highlight the lifetime skills guarantee as well? If someone has a job and thinks they can do something better, we can give them £2,000 or £3,000 to help them retrain. That is huge for people in South Ribble who want to go and do something exciting.
Mr Clarke
My hon. Friend is right. For the first time, any adult without a level 3 qualification will be fully funded by the Government to access three courses worth £3,600 per person. There are 11 million adults across this country without level 3 qualifications; this policy is directly targeted to support them.
We have invested £2.3 billion to hire and retain work coaches, doubling the number to 27,000, a feat that we have achieved in just eight months, and we are spending over £200 million on providing unemployed people with tailored help with CV writing, interview skills and job search advice. [Interruption.] We have doubled free childcare for working families—we can carry this on all day. This is a comprehensive solution to a very challenging series of problems. The plan for jobs is not about quick fixes; it is about creating sustainable employment so that people can be confident about being able to support themselves over the longer term.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point about job applications and employment but, as we have heard, this debate is about the cost of living. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how much the average family has had to pay in increased petrol costs per year, as well as the average cost of filling up a car?
Mr Clarke
This Government have frozen fuel duty for 11 years, so we do not need to take any lessons on that.
It is vital that we keep bearing down on the skills crunch we have been talking about. Our employment strategy is supporting people through a variety of means to gain the knowledge, attributes and qualifications to find work in high-value sectors. Insofar as we achieve that, we will be achieving a much more sustainable, robust economy for the future. Our employment strategy is supporting the finances of people up and down the country, helping them back into work, and helping them earn more and succeed in the jobs of tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Labour offers absolutely no plan to tackle the challenges that the country faces. There is no plan to take the tough decisions on covid; the amounts of money to be raised that are talked about are a fraction of those required to support the demands they are making of the Exchequer. There is no plan to create the high-skilled, high-wage economy, no plan—they voted against it last week—to tackle the NHS backlogs. While we wait for the Opposition to reveal how they would do this, we are taking action.
In April we took definitive action, increasing the national living wage by 2.2% to £8.91 an hour, an increase worth more than £345 a year to a full-time worker on the NLW, and at the same time we extended the NLW to those aged 23 and over. Last year we took action to tackle rent costs by boosting the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile of market rates, and we are keeping cash levels at those higher rates going forward. That will cost more than £950 million this year and has meant that more than 1.5 million households benefited from an additional £600 last year compared with before the crisis. We have protected people from excessive council tax increases and given councils £670 million this year to provide families with help with their bills.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the Government plans for social care reform will force local authorities to increase council tax?
Mr Clarke
We have always been clear, and it has long been the practice, that a proportion of social care bills are met through council tax, and that is the right thing to do. We are saying that, additionally, we need a credible solution to properly fund social care in the long term, so that people can have the dignity in their old age that they deserve. This is a complex and challenging area of policy. While we have stood up and said that we will do the difficult thing and actually increase taxes so that there is enough money for the system not to fall over, Labour simply plays politics with the issue. Voting against what was a progressive, broad-based tax increase to properly fund adult social care was an irresponsible choice, and in their hearts Labour Members must know it.
The new health and social care levy is a £12 billion a year injection into the NHS and social care that will benefit people of all ages and backgrounds. The decision to raise taxes was tough—of course it was; we believe in a low-tax economy—but it was the responsible thing to do given the impact of covid on the country’s finances. Most importantly, that decision was fair: the levy is progressive because those earning more will pay more, and businesses will share the burden.
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his appointment. The point is not whether extra money needs to be raised to fund the NHS or indeed social care; the point is how it is to be raised. National insurance and council tax are regressive, not progressive, taxes, but there are alternatives such as reform of national insurance, looking at assets as well as income, or looking at regional differences. There is a whole raft of options that the Minister and the Government could have considered; why did they not do so? Why have they chosen a regressive system for raising additional money?
Mr Clarke
We did look at this, and Treasury analysis showed that lower-income households will be large net beneficiaries from the package announced by the Prime Minister, with the poorest households gaining the most as a proportion of income. This Government are unafraid to make tough choices in order to safeguard the nation’s finances. The difficult decisions that we have made to increase corporation tax rates and temporarily reduce overseas development assistance—which I know will be considered the right decision by my constituents on Teesside—are clear illustrations of our approach on this front.
As a final point, I remind Members that while we have taken extensive action to safeguard workers’ finances during the pandemic, our record of achievement stretches much further back. Indeed, according to official statistics there were 1 million fewer workless households at the end of 2019 than in 2010, while income inequality was lower going into the pandemic than in that year as well. In fact, over the past 11 years successive Conservative Governments have striven to keep the cost of living in check for millions of households.
Let me give the House some examples. Fuel duty has been frozen for 11 years in a row, cumulatively saving the average driver £1,600. The energy price cap has protected 15 million households in the two years since its launch. We have nearly doubled the personal allowance over the last decade, making it the highest basic personal tax allowance of all countries in the G20 and one of the most generous internationally. In combination, our changes to the national living wage, personal allowance and national insurance currently leave a full-time national living wage employee £5,400 better off in cash terms compared with 2010. I am proud of that, and I think all Conservative Members should be. These measures are just part of a record of achievement that has made a real and lasting difference to people’s lives.
Tulip Siddiq
The Minister is talking about everything that he is proud of. Is he proud that the childcare system in this country is the third most expensive in the world, and that parents are making the choice between paying childcare costs or paying their rent or mortgage? Does he think that removing the universal credit uplift will help working parents? I notice that he has not said anything about childcare, so would he care to elaborate?
Mr Clarke
I would be delighted to. This Government have doubled childcare for working families to 30 hours a week. That is worth £5,000 a year. For working families claiming universal credit, up to 85% of eligible childcare costs are met. That is the right thing to do. We want to keep women in the workforce, and we want to make sure that it is easy for families to adjust to whatever arrangements best suit them to support their children as they grow up.
A plan for jobs, incomes supported, the economy rebounding—this Government have safeguarded the finances of millions of people and, in doing so, set our country on the path to a strong recovery. Working people right across this country are seeing the benefit. We are not just promising a brighter tomorrow; we are delivering positive, tangible change today. Let me stress that we have no plans to alter our course. We will remain relentless in our mission to provide workers in every part of this country with the better prospects, greater security and increased opportunities that they so rightly deserve.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in this important and wide-ranging debate. I will endeavour to respond to as many points raised as possible in the time I have. First, the Opposition have focused on benefits today, but the reality is that this debate is about working people. It is about people in work getting the right support that raises them out of poverty, and benefits are our safety net.
Let me turn to my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer), who made her maiden speech. She spoke about the value she will bring to this place as the first Conservative elected for her constituency, and about her unwavering determination to be here. The fact is that she will be a strong voice in this House, and we welcome her heartily.
The hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) spoke about the price of food. I know the incredible strength of her community and what the pandemic has done across many of our communities. We have all worked together to support those communities. Let us commend all the communities and people who have stepped forward.
My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) spoke about the important investment this Government have made in young people, our support for restart and the emergence of the global economy, which is creating challenges for everybody.
The hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans)—and I thought this was a very important matter—raised the issue of water prices, but also his deep frustration about the impact of loss of water. I have seen that in my own constituency, and that was welcome to hear.
There was an excellent contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), who spoke about the business support in this area, the protection of jobs and the fact that there had been hardship help with council tax bills. He said that we need high skills and to see the impact of T-levels, and this Government are making that happen.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) spoke about Shaun and the mental health impact of the never-ending spiral of poverty, which was absolutely harrowing to hear. Our in-work progression focus will absolutely help people such as Shaun. Our work coaches transform the lives of people like Shaun every day, and we stand ready to help.
The hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) shared her shopping habits, which I very much enjoyed. It was very reassuring to hear that she really understood the value of the DWP to her community.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
This debate is all about jobs. Does the Minister agree that the reopening of the Amlwch jobcentre will ensure that my constituents across Ynys Môn get access to hundreds of new jobs?
Mims Davies
I thank my hon. Friend, and she gives me the opportunity to speak about our unwavering support for the most vulnerable people in our society. Week in and week out, the doors of our jobcentres have remained open for the most vulnerable, but that particular jobcentre has been very difficult to get open safely. I am delighted it is opening imminently, and I know what an impact it has in her community and how much work she does to support that community.
To turn to the thoughtful contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), she spoke about the hiring opportunities, the opportunities of rising wages and of course the challenges of raising a family, which we all know.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) rightly raised the cost of broadband. I am happy to say that at the DWP we have a social tariff available. We want to support people on low incomes who need specific help, and we have specific support through the benefits system and the flexible support fund. She should be reassured by that.
There is so much more I would like to say. There was the passionate contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell). There was the speech from the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), who should please look at the strategy in the disability Green Paper and have a look at the impact of auto-enrolment, which I think will reassure her.
The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) mentioned the value of UC and how it had supported many people, and he asked about our plan. We have had a plan for jobs since last July, and I will go on to make further comments shortly.
We in this House engage weekly in our surgeries with constituents who are in times of need, and nobody could have foreseen how difficult the last 18 months or so were going to be for our society because of a global pandemic. Members have raised various challenges faced by their constituents in different sectors, and they are important matters, but it must be noted that many constituents on UC are working, which is exactly why we have a taper rate to support people. There is no cliff edge on UC—if you work hard, UC helps you to keep more of your money.
Through this pandemic the Government have recognised that people needed significant additional support and have stepped in to help pay the wages of millions of workers, investing over £400 billion in an unprecedented package of support, protecting jobs and safeguarding livelihoods, as we have heard throughout this afternoon. Our plan for jobs, which I have been delivering on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions, is wide-ranging. The package includes kickstart, restart, doubling the number of our work coaches, job entry targeted support, job finding support, sector-based work academy programmes, our enhanced youth offer and new DWP youth hubs, and a significant expansion of our jobcentre network, allowing us to assist our claimants, some for the first time in their lives, with not only benefit support and advice but opportunities to progress or transition to a different sector and harness their skills in a new way.
Mr Holden
Does the Minister agree that the best way to help people, especially those changing jobs, is to do everything we can through jobcentres? I thank the Consett, Stanley and Crook jobcentres for attending my recent “jobs, jobs, jobs” fair at Derwentside College in North West Durham, which the Pensions Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), also kindly came along to. Does the Minister also agree that it is incumbent on all Members to do everything they can to help all their constituents get into new jobs given the record numbers of vacancies across the country?
Mims Davies
Absolutely: jobs, jobs, jobs is the right message, but very little of that has been heard in the Chamber this afternoon from those on the Opposition Benches. On jobs fairs, it is vital that people come through our doors and see what is out there, because it is time once again to be, as this Government are being, forward-thinking, pragmatic and responsible as we push to build back better. The reality is that it is unsustainable to carry on spending the amount that we have been on welfare measures during this pandemic without ongoing increases in public expenditure, which Opposition Members have complained about. Inevitably, that would also affect working people’s taxes—which is what the debate is about.
The extra provision this Government have provided during the pandemic was temporary, to deal with the pandemic head on. Now that public health restrictions have been relaxed, it is right that these temporary support measures come to an end. Of course we also have our successful vaccine roll-out, and pleasingly—we must remember this—we are no longer in the same situation we were in at the turn of the year, and nor is our labour market. We have been able to reopen society, and our economy is recovering strongly. Growth is forecast by the OECD to be 7.2% this year, reflecting the bounce back we are already seeing right across the UK. So it is a time to be bold and empower people to harness their opportunities and help them progress on to their next stage—to give people both the hope and the skills and training they need to thrive in this changing economy.
Kirsty Blackman
What would the Minister say to the working parent who is already trying to juggle hours around childcare and who cannot simply pick up another few hours of work a week? How are they going to make up this shortfall?
Mims Davies
I would say, “Talk to your work coach.” We heard from two hon. Members from Liverpool today. I was in the Toxteth jobcentre meeting the first people taking the digital online level 3 programme, which people can earn a lot more money by taking part in. There are so many opportunities in jobcentres. I know that the hon. Lady has not been to her jobcentre recently, because I checked. Please do go and visit.
Mims Davies
I will make some progress, because I think it is important to talk about the 1 million vacancies that we have in our economy. We have jobs in growing and emerging sectors; we have green jobs, we have tech roles, and they can all be accessed through our jobcentres.
I am determined to help those with the biggest barriers to move closer to the labour market, to ensure that, as the hon. Lady says, people progress into work and see the reward for their efforts, and to help people increase their hours or get into work for the first time, like—I must correct the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke)—the more than 69,000 young people who are now in kickstart roles, on that important first rung of the career ladder.
My message today to everyone in the Chamber and everyone looking in is: if you want to progress in this jobs market, whoever you are, wherever you are—at any age or any stage—we are here for you. We will get behind you. We have dedicated work coaches, and we have boosted them by 13,500 as part of our plan for jobs. We will give you tailored support and we will help you progress. We will not leave you behind.
We are directly investing in our young people most at risk of long-term unemployment with the £2 billion kickstart scheme, a life-changing scheme of a six-month work placement—a springboard into a future career. With over 188,000—I got it right this time—kickstart roles, young people must turn to their work coaches to hear about these amazing opportunities.
Meanwhile, I must let the House know that we have a new youth hub across every Jobcentre Plus district throughout England, Scotland and Wales. By Christmas, we will have 150 new youth hubs open. These are valuable new partnerships—interventions for direct life chances—with local councils, football clubs, charities such as the Prince’s Trust, and local training providers.
We are also seeing lives changed by our job entry targeted support programme, which is known as JETS, with over 25,000 people starting new jobs since our plan for jobs was launched. That is not forgetting our £2.9 billion restart scheme, which will, crucially, help those who are leaving furlough. We have also refreshed our “50 PLUS: Choices” offer, and we have stronger support for those who need any extra skills through our lifetime skills guarantee.
I am passionate—I hope the House has noticed it this evening—about getting people into jobs, but also about progressing people when they are in work. This Government’s longer-term ambition remains to build an economy that ensures that everyone, no matter what their background, has the opportunities to enter work and progress out of low pay.
We are absolutely taking action. The in-work progression commission was launched in March 2020 by the DWP. We will respond shortly to its report, but it is all about getting that understanding about the barriers that people in low pay face and, crucially, as we talked about this afternoon, ensuring that work remains the best route out of poverty.
Our plan for jobs programme is also helping claimants to gain the skills they need to progress in work. Our sector-based work academy programmes—SWAPs—are helping people get new skills to retrain and pivot into growing sectors, from viticulture to construction, infrastructure and social care. Haulage has been mentioned this afternoon; we have a programme in that, too. We also have DWP Train and Progress, which provides the ability to access the Department for Education skills bootcamps in growing sectors. With over a million—
Sir Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.